It was a muggy summer day. But Griffin Johnson could have used a sweatshirt. Standing in a crisp, dry room below the surface of Kansas City, Missouri, he pressed a big, red, start button on the iPad connected to his RTC360 scanner. The instrument whirred as it mapped the limestone contours of the world’s coolest business complex.

Known as SubTropolis, the 8-million-square-foot marvel is an ancient limestone mine located just north of Kansas City. Its 10 miles of well-lit roads, 2 miles of railroad track, and more than 500 truck dock locations are used to store everything from furniture to medicine to old movie reels.

It’s so large that owner Hunt Midwest is continuously converting more nooks into usable storage rooms.

It’s so large that owner Hunt Midwest is continuously converting more nooks into usable storage rooms. That’s where Griffin comes in.

Along with his colleague Karl Pierson, Griffin spent several weeks this summer surveying thousands of square feet of unfinished rooms. The roughly 65-foot-by-40-foot spaces are divided by massive limestone columns. For surveyors who often work on large outdoor projects, the SubTropolis space was a different challenge.

“The RTC360 is really the perfect tool for this job,” Griffin said. “It’s not our normal instrument for an aboveground job. But it’s the right size and maneuverability for something like this.”

The visuals that Karl and Griffin collected were extremely detailed. They, along with their office crew, created an outline of each pillar, wall, and floor in their section of the cave. That data helps engineers and construction crews know exactly what they’ll be facing when they turn the unfinished space into clean, bright storage spaces for customers.

Griffin is relatively new to the surveying world. He joined Olsson in 2022 and the SubTropolis project is an interesting – and still ongoing – chapter in the book of his young career.

“I was working deep in one of the unfinished rooms and came across an old Coke can. The logo said it was the ‘soft drink of the new millennium.’ That’s not something you often see.”

Old treasures. New experiences. Just another day at work.